The art is replete in many areas of electron beam generation with directly heated filament electron beam sources of varied configurations. Single filament guns particularly suited for such electron beam irradiating applications are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,702,412 and 4,100,450 of common assignee herewith, and are embodied in Energy Sciences Inc., Type ESI Gun apparatus. Multi, including parallel, filament constructions have also been proposed as in, for example, U.S. Pat. No., 3,749,967 and 3,863,163. In these, as in other vacuum tube applications, including also x-ray generating equipment, a wide variety of heated filament support structures have been used, many of permanent nature, requiring total replacement upon the burning out of or damage to the filament, and others capable of disassembly for filament wire replacement, though generally complicated and time consuming. Such uses of directly heated filaments, typically operating at temperatures in excess of 2000.degree. C., have required different types of mechanical support and electrical terminations for the filaments, depending upon space, dimension and specific application considerations. In addition to the replacement problem above described, additional typical problems with existing filament structures and terminations are: high cost, difficulty in alignment, low reliability, adaptibility for large dimension structures.
The problem, however, of providing a universal, efficient, simple and reliable heated filament support construction that improves reliability and ease of assembly and maintenance, and more particularly that readily can accommodate up-and-down sizing in filament length and facile filament replacement, has, until the present invention, lingered in this art for many decades.
In accordance with the present invention, a novel filament support and spring clipping technique is provided, particularly though by no means exclusively adapted for use in alined multi-filament cathodes and the like, as well, as described in copending U.S. patent application of common assignee Ser. No. 796,479, filed Nov. 22, 1991, for Improved Parallel Filament Electron Gun.